This invention relates to air conditioning, and in particular, to a louver assembly for selectively directing conditioned air into a desired comfort zone.
Many air conditioning units are equipped with adjustable louvers that can be manually positioned to direct the flow of conditioned air into a specific comfort region to provide for the reflective heating or cooling. Typically, the units contain two sets of louvers. One set contains a plurality of horizontally aligned vanes which can be positioned to direct the discharged air stream upwardly, downwardly or straight ahead. The second set of louvers which are generally mounted behind the first set can be positioned to direct the air stream to one side or the other of the unit or again straight ahead. The manually positionable louvers are frictionally retained in a mounting frame located in the discharge duct of the unit so that the louvers will remain in the desired preset position against the force of the supply air stream.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,299,978 there is disclosed a mechanism that is adapted to angularly displace a pair of adjacent horizontally disposed louver vanes to increase or decrease the width of the flow path between the vanes and thus increase or decrease the flow velocity of the supply air. Adjusting the angular relationship between the blades does little to effect the direction of the supply air stream and the motor driven system, in effect, limits the range of adjustability of the horizontally aligned louvers.
In many air conditioning applications and, in particular heat pump applications, it is desirous to provide the discharge louvers with a wide range of adjustability. For example, it may be advantageous to direct a flow of cooling air upwardly toward the ceiling of a room to thoroughly mix with the hot air in the room and thus produce more rapid cooling. By the same token, it may be more efficient to direct a flow of heated air downwardly toward the floor of the comfort zone. Oftentimes, however, the air conditioning unit is situated, such as, at the ceiling of the comfort zone so that manual adjustment of the louvers cannot be readily accomplished.